


Letters To My Darling

by RavenOfCogs



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Other, Some Spoilers, my love for gingers is as infinite as the flow of time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 02:56:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16031525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavenOfCogs/pseuds/RavenOfCogs
Summary: He has letters addressed to someone forgotten.





	Letters To My Darling

**Author's Note:**

> Hey first time writing for Arcana! Positive feedback is always welcome. Hopefully I’ll get back into the swing of writing. Not beta read because I have no fandom friends. It’s also kinda short.

Letters. Letters stuffed inside his coat. Letters to someone forgotten. Letters of grief, of pain, of loss, but he could never bring himself to get rid of them. For as much as he invited pain, this kind, this hollow, incomplete burning deep inside was not one he welcomed. 

The letters all started the same. “Hello my darling.” It would then go on about what he had done recently. He doesn’t know when they started, or even how many there are. But they’re pieces to a time he needs to remember. 

The first one he found held the beginning of the story. With the messy scrawling and dramatic declarations, it was no doubt it was his. 

Hello my darling,

The library here is big enough to fit the clinic inside twice over! You would definitely enjoy it. Even in these abysmal times the palace is a place of grandeur. The gardens are something out of old fairytales. And there are too many rooms to remember. Each hallway has trails of gold along the walls. The food is something else entirely. At dinner there was dishes from everywhere from Nevion to Praka! I hardly knew what to try first. Though it’s grand, the clinic dwarfs it simply because you are there and not here.

My darling even with these luxuries I find myself counting down the days. In the breaks between long hours of research, I wish I could make the sun move faster in its course so I may return to you. Four more days, my light. Four more days until I may hold you again.

Forever yours,  
Ilya

He first assumed this set the murder somewhere in those four days. It was disproven with a crumpled and smeared collection of rambling words stuffed in the pages of a well worn book.

Hello my darling,

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I failed. I wasn’t there. I should have been. If only I had worked harder. Maybe if I’d spent more time looking. I’m sorry my love. I’m sorry I didn’t help. I’m sorry I’m so useless. I should have done more. I’m sorry I don’t know enough. I’m sorry. I’m sorry my light that I could fail you in three days. 

I’m sorry.

Forever yours,  
Ilya

This letter was always in the back of his mind whenever he spoke to someone important to him. It clawed at his heart on his rare correspondence with Pasha. It coiled around his throat when Mazelinka opened her home to him. It twisted a knife in his gut when a certain apprentice took his side. It hissed at him when he started to care. How could he be worth any of their kindness if it could take simply three days for him to bring them ruin?

The next letter he found was exhausted. He’d found it tangled in an old shirt.

 

Hello my darling,

I’ve stayed at the palace for about two months as of now. I’m still no closer to a cure. I think it takes hold in the blood, but the more I look, the more questions I gain. Hours of studying and suffering the manic joy of that Quaestor seem to hold no end. Maybe I deserve this hell.

A magician has been brought in. He makes little sense, but he helps me forget. My light, I wish I could be doing more.

Forever yours,  
Ilya

Another was a crumpled ball under his bed.

Hello my darling,

I keep having the same nightmare. We are standing on a tiny island in the middle of the sea. You are always smiling at me like I’m the only thing that matters. And then the ocean turns to blood. A wave made of bloody hands grab you and try to drag you back with them. You fight back with all that you are, calling out to me for help. You scream and cry and I just stand there. I don’t say a word. I don’t even raise a finger. They drag you down and your face is so broken. I deserve these terrors. Too much blood is on my hands for me to ever be a good man. Yours was the sealing bond.

Forever yours,  
Ilya

He’d find them in the most random of places. One was tucked in the knot of a tree in an innocuous little clearing. 

Hello my darling,

What to say, what to say? This little place where I’m writing to you is blissfully untouched by the terror in the city. I wish I could show it to you. There’s a small pond in the center and around it is soft grass and flowers. There’s been very little improvement in the state of things yet the masquerade will still go on. It’s for the best I suppose. A reprieve from the every present hand of death. A part of me was to embrace the specter, but I could never face you if I didn’t fix this, if I’m even still welcome at your side. 

Forever yours,  
Ilya

He’s afraid to look in the corners of the city in case he finds more evidence of his incompetence. But he must.

The last letter he finds is crumpled and half torn on his old desk in the dungeon. It’s mostly illegible. But he can read parts. The important parts.

Hello my darling,

I’ve found it.

Hanged Man.

Death.

Forever yours,  
Ilya

He’s knows what he must do


End file.
